10 Angeles cops relieved amid reports of extortion

ANGELES CITY, Philippines  – At least 10 city policemen have been relieved from their posts and assigned elsewhere after they were linked to alleged extortion of foreign tourists.

Senior Superintendent Pierre Bucsit, city police chief, said the 10 lawmen face no formal charges but were relieved so as to stop persistent reports on extortion.

“The problem is that no foreign tourist has filed any formal charge to substantiate reports that some policemen have been extorting from (tourists),” he said.

Bucsit did not name the 10 policemen.

According to reports, local policemen allegedly frame up foreign tourists in supposed pedophilia cases and then extort sums ranging from P500,000 to P1 million so they would not be charged in court.

In July last year, Chief Superintendent Errol Pan, then Central Luzon police director, ordered a thorough probe on reports that minors were being used to lure foreigners into sex for extortion entrapments in collusion with some local policemen.

This was in reaction to a speech made by Superintendent Florendo Saligao, then chief of the Crime Investigation and Detection Unit, before the association of hotels and restaurants in Pampanga that minors “are being exposed to the sex trade and being abused by pedophiles, drug syndicates, and those into the cybersex trade.”

Saligao also revealed extortion schemes allegedly involving policemen where foreign tourists were lured into having sex with minors and then subjected to raids in motel rooms. He said the foreigners just paid up and then fled the country.

The website centralluzoncorruption.com, reportedly managed by a Filipino-American woman based here, later implicated Saligao in such schemes. Nothing resulted from the probe ordered by Pan.

Bucsit, however, said police had won over the one operating the controversial website to help them curb crimes against foreign tourists. A check showed that the website is no longer active.

Despite the negative publicity, city tourism officer Pie Flores said tourism in the city has not been affected, although she could not cite statistics, except for estimates that local investments have grown by 42 percent in the past two years.

Noting that most foreign tourists here are males, Mayor Francis Nepomuceno said his administration is exerting all efforts to make the city family-oriented.

Angeles has been frequently dubbed as “sin city” due to its numerous nightclubs that used to cater to US servicemen at the former Clark US Air Force base, which is now a freeport.